The Eight ‘S’s of successful strategy execution

Abstract

As the business environment becomes more complex and more changeful, the need to reformulate strategy and/or to adjust elements of the existing strategy becomes more frequent. As a result senior executives find themselves confronted with the need to integrate a number of changes in the execution of the new or revised strategy. This dissemination and integration of execution actions is especially difficult across cross-functional activities. The ‘8 “S”s of Strategy Execution’ is a heuristic that enables senior management to more readily enact, monitor, and assess the cross functional execution of strategies, new or revised. The 8 ‘S’s model is a revision of the original McKinsey 7 ‘S’s model. The most significant change comes in the deletion of skills from the McKinsey model and the addition of reSources in its place. Furthermore, Strategic Performance has been added to the model to help focus the strategy execution effort.

Keywords:

• Strategy execution
• 8 ‘S’s of strategy execution
• cross-functional coordination
• aligning functions with strategy
• successful alignment
• unsuccessful alignment